Steve Buscemi plays a nebbish mama’s boy who spends his inheritance having his mother brought back from the grave, only for her to turn into a flesh hungry member of the living dead.

This film is essentially Peter Jackson’s Braindead (or Dead Alive, if you’re american) presented as a Joe Dante style offbeat comedy. All of the key moments and theses of Jackson’s film are included; The awkward dinner scene with a strange couple, death by lawnmower, the inclusion of a killer priest, to name but a few. It’s hard to believe that this is coincidental, just one year after Braindead.

Ed and His Dead Mother is pretty fun in spite of it’s unoriginality and has a great supporting cast including Ned Beatty, John Glover and John Gries. Buscemi is great in the lead, carrying the weight of this quirky flick on his shoulders.

Like many early 90’s dark comedies, Ed wraps itself up in too neat a bow in the end while many threads are left unexplored. It’s saggy in the middle and visually drab, despite it’s colour palette, but a fun ride nonetheless. The whole movie feels like it would have been better served as an episode of Tales From the Crypt.